Hello and welcome to my blog. I’m Dr. Doug Knueven but I go by Dr. Doug for reasons that become obvious when you try to pronounce my last name. (By the way, it is pronounced “KNEEVEN” – you pronounce all the letters except the “U”) I was raised in a small suburb of Cincinnati named […]
If you care about your animal companion this video will make you think. http://bit.ly/2ogoCYu
Stoney was 14 years old when he was carried into my office by his owners. His rear legs had been paralyzed for seven weeks and conventional treatments had not helped. X-rays revealed severe arthritis of his spine but that alone did not explain his condition. Possible causes for his neurologic deficit included a spinal tumor, […]
Most pet foods that claim to be “natural” or “holistic” are indeed not! All you need to do is look at the official definitions of these terms to understand what I’m saying. The standards for pet food labels are set by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO). AAFCO’s definition of natural is: “a […]
Nutritional reductionists believe that they can formulate complete and balanced diets for dogs and cats. They create pet foods from ingredients that the ancestors of our dogs and cats did not have access to. The conditions under which the animal body was finely tuned over millions of years can give us insight into what is […]
As explained in last week’s blog, determinism is the belief that any subject can be best understood by understanding its parts. When determinism is applied to nutrition you get the kind of silly statements that veterinary nutritionists and pet food manufacturers make all the time. These experts will tell you that it is not the […]
Reductionism is a common belief among scientists and researchers in Western medicine. The idea is that anything can best be understood by looking at its parts. When you comprehend how each part works then you can appreciate the thing of which they are a part. This is the way I was trained in veterinary school. […]
As a holistic practitioner, I treat the whole pet. Animals often come to me because they have a specific problem. The Western medicine way of dealing with such difficulties is to only focus on the issue at hand. In veterinary school we really learn more about disease care than we do about health care. The […]
Most homeopathic remedies are very dilute. In fact any homeopathic remedy of 24X or 12C potency and above has been diluted to the point that statistically speaking, not even one particle of the original substance remains. Herein lies the major complaint about homeopathy. We are all very familiar with the pharmacological, linear, dose-response curve. A […]
There is a common notion that dogs are omnivores. And, the bottom line is that they are omnivores. Of course that’s because they have no choice but to eat what we feed them. This is typically processed kibble containing at least 30% carbohydrates. Think about this; if we captured all the polar bears in the […]
Digestibility is a measure of how easily a pet food ingredient is broken down by the digestive system and absorbed into the body. The more digestible the food, the quicker the nutrients enter the pet’s bloodstream. Pet food companies sometimes brag about their food’s digestibility. On the surface, this sounds like a good thing. Who […]